Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery
Read Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery Online
Authors: Maria Schneider
Tags: #humorous mystery, #amateur sleuth, #mystery, #cozy mystery
Table of Contents
Executive Dirt
Maria E. Schneider
Copyright: 2015 © Maria E. Schneider
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A BearMountainBooks.com Production
Executive Dirt Summary
Sedona happily turns down Steve Huntington’s latest undercover project when Mark gets her a fantastic job testing advanced cell phones. But if the dead body of her co-worker is any indication, the new job may not prove to be any safer than Huntington’s covert assignments.
Sedona finds herself knee-deep in dirt and tangled in clues that unravel faster than the baby bib she is supposed to be sewing for her niece. Her parents are in town to visit the new baby, and Mark has decided it’s time for Sedona to meet his mother. Can she somehow endure family interferences and stay alive long enough to solve the case?
Chapter 1
Sometimes you’re so busy climbing the corporate ladder, you forget whether there is an actual goal. Your original dream might have been to make enough money to travel the world, but then you buy the house and the car, and you keep climbing. Before you know it, your dream becomes climbing to the next rung on the ladder.
I thought I’d already witnessed the worst of ladder climbing, but it turns out the shoving and clawing at an established company was mere child’s play. Ladder climbing at a startup had the usual politics, but there were flamboyant fools who created ladder rungs out of toothpicks in an inane attempt to crown themselves king.
I worked at the Borgot startup thanks to Mark Huntington. His brother Steve Huntington kept offering me dangerous undercover jobs that involved ferreting out company malfeasance. Mark decided to find me a well-paying computer job that didn’t involve any investigating whatsoever. This new job kept Mark happy, and these days his happiness was tied pretty closely to mine.
I have to admit, Borgot paid well for my skills as a computer technician. There was no need to even consider any job Huntington might offer. Besides, I always ended up fired when I accepted the jobs Huntington arranged.
Borgot was very modern, with a goal of designing a multi-language product to compete with Apple’s Siri, the automated personal assistant voice. The technology part I liked. What I didn’t appreciate was the ultra-modern office space that consisted of six-foot cubicles. I’d always enjoyed being a lab rat, testing machines and then running the maze all over again to see if the results changed when equipment changed. But add a cubicle to the work conditions, and suddenly I was the rat in the maze, and it was my survival skills being tested instead of the machines.
I wasn’t winning the race either. The noise and lack of privacy set my teeth on edge. Doll Baby on the other side of one wall took phone calls all day, flirting and giggling. When she wasn’t in her cube, she was sashaying all over the company cooing into her cell phone.
A peal of laughter vibrated against the shared wall of our cubes. “Who can she possibly be flirting with at ten in the morning after five earlier calls?” I asked no one.
Doll Baby, otherwise known as Monique, wasn’t the worst of my cube-mates. No, that prize went to the dork who had just walked in, late again. Joe Black plopped down at his desk across the cube “hallway” breathing as though he had run all the way inside. He heaved a few extra pants and then shouted, “Owhay, ayay oingday?”
Perhaps it was some sort of cattle roundup call, or maybe he was having a stroke. Either way, I was not interested.
“Did you hear me?” With ridiculous pride, he spread his arms as far as the cube walls allowed, which meant he nearly punched a hole through his computer monitor. “Igpay atinlay.”
I didn’t even bother with a grimace. Ignoring him was easier.
He clarified magnanimously, “Pig Latin. It’s a sign of higher intelligence. I can speak it faster than I can type and actually understand it quicker than most people can translate to a second language. They hired me because I’m a language expert. The phrases I’m contributing to the phone assistant are groundbreaking.”
Joe “Dork” was balding badly. He had compensated for this by allowing the small amount of hair around his ears and along the back of his skull to grow long. He did not contain it in a neat ponytail. It wisped about his person as if it too wished it could leave him.
His phone rang. Thank God for small miracles.
Of course, the conversation was still broadcast loudly enough that even the cockroaches, needing daytime sleep, were probably leaving the building.
“I moved out of my place, man. I couldn’t leave her on her own. The old lady was having a hard time with things, and shit, going over to her place to do the laundry, up the stairs and down the stairs, it was a pain in the ass. I had to move back in.”
Before I, or anyone else forced to listen, could begin to marvel at Joe Dork actually having a girlfriend or wife, he clarified. “But she’s my mom! I couldn’t leave her in the lurch. She was going crazy trying to figure out what time to cook for me, too.” Another pause while he listened. Then suddenly he acted as though he had just realized half the place could hear the conversation.
“Man, not now. I mean, I know it’s important, but she’s my mom. She isn’t going to spout anything even if she notices. Ottagay ebay arefulcay.”
My sorry brain translated without any explicit commands from me. “Gotta be careful?” I did not want to know what Dork had to be careful of. His mother killing him? I would wear earplugs tomorrow whether or not they stuck out my ears and made me look funny.
Joe glanced down at his geek watch as though he had a pressing meeting. “Okay, okay. I won’t take it home with me. She’ll never see it. Onay usinessbay atyay omehay.”
He wouldn’t take his business home with him? Of course he wouldn’t. He didn’t
do
any actual work. He was chronically late. He mostly showed up at meetings to crack bad jokes.
Dork’s chair squeaked loudly in protest as he swiveled. His too obvious search for listeners was a tad on the desperate side.
Doll Baby sashayed past our cube openings. She actually wore those very words across the back of her pink hot-pants. Right across her butt. Her other favorite tights had a smiley face, one of those big yellow internet smileys, only hers was winking, of course.
I glued my eyes determinedly to my computer screen.
Joe Dork’s next Pig Latin phrase was something about giving it back next week.
I continued to concentrate on my test report, but as soon as Joe hung up, he kicked the drawer of his desk as if that would somehow solve whatever problem had called him on the phone. He checked the time on his watch again, but caught the glare I shot in his direction.
“What?” he asked on an escaped belch.
A snarl escaped my lips. “Could you be quiet, already?”
He dropped his arm and pulled his sleeve down. “A man has to take care of his business.”
I snorted in disgust.
He rolled his chair back warily as I stood and stalked past on the way to the break room.
Why couldn’t he be just an ordinary, brilliant geek? Why did I have to sit next to a geek wannabe? Real geeks had talent. He had nothing but inane phrases and gadgets from a dime store, nothing he had created himself.
In the break room, I snatched up a kolache and a chocolate milk. The only reason management provided free food was to keep us here as many hours as possible. If they could have, the company would have brought in cots so that we could catch an hour or two of sleep before hitting the workload again.
I returned to my cubicle, heaving a sigh of relief when I saw that Joe Dork was no longer in his cube. Thank God. I hoped the loser would stay gone or bury himself somewhere.
How was I supposed to know that he looked better alive and was a whole lot less trouble?
Chapter 2
Steve Huntington learned about corrupt corporate behavior because his own company, the one he had babied from the ground up, was robbed blind. He now teamed with his just-younger brother, Mark. They were highly paid to investigate corporate shenanigans, and despite my best efforts, I’d ended up helping a time or two.
Huntington is smooth as glass and rich enough that you tend not to notice he is peeling back layers of a corporation, infiltrating himself right next to the other suits and extracting those who have decided on devious and illegal means to enrich their own pockets.
His brother Mark is, by my standards, even more attractive than Steve. Of course, I’m dating Mark, so I’m biased, but where Huntington—that is Steve—slides into the enemy camp like polish on an executive desk, Mark is more a mysterious shadow that darts in with deadly efficiency and, more often than not, leaves not a trace. He is a fascinating enigma with secrets, yet he is safety in a storm.
Me? I’m just an engineer. I honestly have no real love of intrigue. Huntington claims to this day that I excel at undercover work because everyone ignores me. There is a less-than-subtle intended insult in that assessment.
When he knocked on my door on this almost-spring April evening, I was immediately suspicious. Why was he visiting me?
He was Mark’s brother, so I let him in.
“Huntington.”
“Just call me Steve, would you? I brought you a sewing machine.”
My eyes bugged out, but he kept talking. After the birth of my niece, Huntington had teased me about sewing. It had certainly seemed like a joke at the time, because I can barely sew a button on a blouse, but here he was babbling about infiltration and a matching baby bumpo or bumper something-or-other for Brenda, my sister-in-law.
“You want me to
what?
”
Huntington almost always looked smug, so the superior tilt to his head was nothing new. He flashed his baby blues in what he probably thought was innocence, but that was the one expression he could not possibly pull off, not even to a complete stranger, and we were far past that.
“How hard can it be? I need to obtain info about a guy who has been involved in some high-end burglaries, and his mother is in a sewing group. I promised Mark no more dangerous assignments for you so this time all you have to do is attend a few quilting parties and get in good with a bunch of old ladies.” He held up a soft sided case, one that looked like it might hold bowling equipment. Even bowling, which I would have also turned down, would be better than sewing.
“I don’t sew.”
“So learn. How—”
My snarling lip stopped him short of professing how easy it would be. “Why don’t
you
join the group if it’s so all-fired easy?” I suggested. “This is the age of enlightenment. I bet the ladies would love to offer you a sewing lesson or two.”